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The Sunday Word: Debate Prep

With less than a week to go until the first general election presidential debate, the candidates will be preparing over the next few days for their first major face-off on Friday in Oxford, Mississippi. Both campaigns know it could be a pivotal moment in the race for the White House.

Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, will be hunkering down for “debate camp” in Florida starting on Tuesday. The Times’s Jeff Zeleny notes that while Mr. Obama will have no big events in the critical swing state next week, Mr. Obama’s “mere presence (fueled by a few photo opportunities) will surely draw considerable local media attention and put to rest any suggestions that he does not intend to aggressively compete in the state with Senator John McCain.”

The Times’s Patrick Healy has the details about the format of both the presidential and vice presidential debates:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

However, the Washington Post’s Robert G. Kaiser reports that there will be “no guidelines given to Gwen Ifill of PBS, moderator of the vice presidential debate, as to subject matter, allowing her to mix in questions about foreign and domestic matters.”

You can catch both candidates in separate interviews on CBS’s “60 Minutes” tonight.Fund-Raising The Obama campaign took in $65 million during the month of August with a significant portion coming in the last days of the month after he was officially nominated at the Democratic National Convention. The Times’s Michael Luo also notes that Senator John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin to fill out the Republican ticket may have played a roll in the Democrats’ robust fund-raising performance.

On the Trail The Democrats are aggressively distributing an article in Contingencies magazine by Senator McCain, that as the Washington Post reports, “included a favorable reference to banking deregulation that, in light of this week’s near-meltdown in the financial industry, provided an irresistible target for Sen. Obama’s campaign and once again put McCain on the defensive.”

Meanwhile, while campaigning in Florida, Senator Barack Obama took on Mr. McCain over the Republican’s support for allowing individuals to invest some of their Social Security money. But, as The Times’s Jeff Zeleny notes, “the idea has taken on a new air of political vulnerability because of the upheaval on Wall Street.”

Race and the Election A new Associated Press-Yahoo News poll finds that Americans’ views on race could spell trouble for the candidacy of Senator Obama. According to the Associated Press’s Ron Fournier and Trevor Thompson, the poll “suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about 2.5 percentage points.” This was conducted with Stanford University, and includes a lot of attitudinal questions about how whites feel about African-Americans.

Democrats said that John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, was leading the transition preparations for Mr. Obama. Mr. Podesta, who founded a lobbying firm with his brother in 1988, is president of the Center for American Progress, a sort of government-in-exile waiting for Democrats to regain power. At the McCain campaign, Republicans said, transition work is being coordinated by William E. Timmons, a longtime Washington lobbyist whose clients have included the American Petroleum Institute and the mortgage company Freddie Mac.

If Mr. McCain wins, Republicans said, his transition team will probably be led by Mr. Timmons and John F. Lehman, a McCain fund-raiser who was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan.

Campaign Trail Roundup

* Senator John McCain attends the National Guard Convention in Baltimore, Md.

I am writing on the 700 billion dollar bail out Sec. Paulson wants Congress to pass. It seems to me that corporations are trying to save their own hides on the back of the American people. We cannot allow this to happen to us again — corporations first, people never. And know one knows what loans belong to who. How can that be? It sounds fishy and criminal. We cannot just go rushing into this maze but we must carefully try to find our way out that will benefit the people this time and not the corporations, which will be a solution and not just a bail out to corporations, to save their hide, their wealth, their way of life. Trickle down economics does not make sense because in nature we build from the bottom up, etc. a plant, a tree, a child and even when we build homes or cars we start from the bottom and expand up or outwards and that is how we should model our business dealings and growth. We cannot work against nature’s wisdom and intelligence by hoping things will trickle down. It is just not sensible. We have a intelligent design through nature and we should use her model not man’s greed. It is very hard for me to trust the people who got us into this mess to be able to get us out of this mess. That too does not make sense!

Now I get it, McCain’s definition of a maverick: Do the bidding of the financial services industry lobbyists for 25 years to deregulate the economy and promote a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the masters of the universe, all the while playing up my experience as a POW 40 years ago. And to think we’ve fallen for it up until now.

Race is the 800 pound elephant in the room that is explicitly left unmentioned. Sadly, it comes out in other forms:

– We don’t know enough about Obama;
– He does not really practice his publicly professed religion;
– He is not patriotic.

The Palin/McCain ticket not only doesn’t have to deal with such silliness (has anyone questioned why McCain does not wear a flag pin?), but lies on real claims do not stick to them (Bridge to Nowhere, et. al.).

Hopefully, the debates will enable voters’ choices to be made on more substantial metrics.

Wall Street has effectively killed Barack Obama’s signature issue of “Change”. Although many in the country my still have a huge desire for change; the one thing the Wall Street mess has proven is that what we want may not be what we need. The truth is never fun to hear, but the fact of the matter is that the staggering costs of the bail out to avoid a full on financial meltdown will severely constrain the governments ability to pay for any type of new programs, and there will be little if any excess wealth left to redistribute. We can no longer afford “Change”. But we are still fighting two very important wars, conflicts that we cannot just walk away from. The county over the next four years needs a steady leader who is willing and able to engage our enemies. The recent bombing of the Marriot in Pakistan should serve as a reminder to all of us that the most important change we can make as a nation is to win the war against Islamic terrorism.

Isn’t is sexism on the part of the McCain campaign to suggest that Sarah Palin is not able to debate Biden in the usual format? If she is not up to this task, how will she handle unscripted events as VP? I guess McCain is admitting that yes, she is unexperienced and unready and has to be protected. Can you imagine a male candidate getting away with this? I am appalled that by the time we get to see Palin unscripted, it may be too late. Or perhaps the Obama camp knows that Biden will easily expose her ignorance (or rather she will), no matter what the format.

God forbid that Palin should have to say something cogent beyond McCain talking points. Why don’t they just have a blow up doll and a tape recorder, if they don’t want her answering any hard questions? It’s absurd that this stupid stupid woman has a chance to run this country.

As for the race poll, this is no surprise. We’ve known all along that Obama will not get the racist vote. But that is not as much as the AP may think; more like a difference of 3% rather than 6-7%. And much of that will be concentrated in the South and red states that Obama did not expect to win anyway.

BTW, did people read the small article in Newsweek about the candidates cars? McCain owns 13, including several foreign makes. Obama owns 1, a Ford hybrid. So, which candidate is more in touch with regular people?

This Sunday Americans are waking up to the fact that deregulation, long advocated by McCain, does not work. You cannot expect those who are looking over billions not to take some (if no one is watching) and to then ask for more when they lose it.

In their preparation, this issue of the regulation must be address before sending our tax money to Wall Street.

I am hoping that Obama can get through to the retirees in FL so that they see the immediate need to right this country and make it a safe and secure country for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s future.

There will be untold destruction if the GOP gets in. If you think the situation is bad now… it’ll become much worse. There have been a good number of people on these blogs saying that if McCain gets in they will be moving to Canada. I would not blame them for doing so. The country’s overall situation is more dire than the GOP leads you to believe – they are not the answer to a better America.

As long as Biden gets asked the same difficult questions that Palin is asked it shouldn’t be a problem.

I haven’t heard any candidate be “quizzed” like Palin was on ABC’s interview with Gibson. Not one of them.

You are all a bunch of hypocrits. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

If we are fighting for equality and it is in fact given, (which to date I haven’t seen it other than Palin being named to the ticket), then it is Palin’s job to manage the debates. Regardless. The job comes with pressures and these debates are meant to show us how the candidates stack up against each other.

But from the sounds of it, Biden has his own set of problems he will have to deal with. The guy flatly talks too much and doesn’t know when to put a sock in it. His problem is that he’ll answer the question and then keep on answering it until he says something so stupid he will make himself shut up.

“Obama should be better prepared to answer “when does life begin”. His answer that is “above my pay grade” is an embarrasment.”

I have a Ph.D. in molecular biology. I know about sperm-egg fusion, about fusion of the pronuclei. I know about cleavage-stage divisions of the zygote, formation of the blastula and implantation. I do not know “when life begins”. Why? because there is no scientific answer to this question, only philosophical answers. Opinions, if you will. And you know what? You don’t know either.

With regard to the AP/Yahoo poll that suggests that incipient racism might slant the election results in favor of McCain, I suggest that everyone actually click on the poll results and examine them for themselves. The article describing these results focused on the race issue, but the actual poll results reflected overwhelmingly positive feedback on Obama’s prospects. In many, many other aspects he was ranked far stronger than McCain. I found the article very misleading, as the poll itself was not race-centric.

I would also make the point that the questions about race were so general that I, for one, would have had trouble answering them. Check it out — see for yourselves.

The VP debate must elicit Governor Palin’s own views on critical issues including foreign policy and terrorism, global warming, and the economy, given the advanced age of Senator McCain and the distinct possibility that she may have the opportunity to affect policy as President. She should not be allowed to simply use the debate as an opportunity to say what McCain will do as President.

I cannot belief, but why am I not schocked,that the republican managers of McCain-Palin are throwing every lie, misrepresentation,& other CRAP into this election. As a rabid independent who supported Ross Perot & others in the past(I’m 67) if the American voters let this bunch running poor old john get away with the same thing they did in 2004, the American people deserve a ROYAL screwing for not 4 yrs., but a lifetime.If we do not get people back to work with private, & government project jobs, get our health care costs under control, quit sending our wealth to China & the middle East for oil, then we deserve to regress to a third world country. Republicans truly believe in a totally free economy.NO REGULATIONS. Guess what, wall Street is controlled by greed. It has prospered under Bush. Do we want more of the same? McCain & Palin ARE republicans with republican lobbist managers.They will not, nor can they ,change what their contributors are paying for.If the ignorant prevail in this election, the same crowd that have kept bush & cheney in will have screwed us again, & laugh all the way to the bank.

no guidelines given to Gwen Ifill of PBS, moderator of the vice presidential debate, as to subject matter, allowing her to mix in questions about foreign and domestic matters.”

Hmm an African American (an obvious Obama supporter) but also a woman (could she be a palinit/) moderating the debate…

1) but then the fact remains Ifill shows up at the minority conference of journos and was a part of the standing O for Obama,
2) is a part of the Left Wing PBS, and ofcourse
3) like Oprah (or other Distunguished Black Women) would put race first over gender..

I am disgusted that the Republican’s mysogyny has even leaked into the debates. They clearly chose Palin to be seen but not heard, and are quivering at the thought of this inexperienced, intellectual lightweight expressing herself on issues well outside her realm. The extent of McCain’s hypocrisy is boundless. We as a country cannot afford to have these sexist reactionaries in power.

The money spent on your “advanced education” clearly has been money thrown away. The answer that eludes you can be found in Biology 101. Everything from the moment of sperm/egg fusion and onward IS life.

Perhaps it’s not too late for you to get a refund on your “higher” education. Either you were poorly served by those who “taught” you, or you slept through an awful lot of classes.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…